Preparing an EU proposal

Support from the EU Team

The EU team provides advice and extensive support packages for applicants including one-to-one meetings, workshops and a proposal read-through service.

If you are interested in a collaborative proposal – please consult our Finding partners page.

If you are preparing an EU proposal, contact the pre-award team to let us know about your application and see what support we can offer. We have created bespoke support packages for ERC, Marie Curie Doctoral Networks, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships, EIC Pathfinder (coming soon) and Leeds-coordinated Collaborative projects under Pillar 2’s Global Challenges. Consult our Brochure for details.

If you are not sure what EU scheme is right for you, please consult our Identifying the right EU Funding scheme page to work out which scheme(s) might be most appropriate for you.

Giving the EU Team access to your EU Proposal

Horizon Europe proposals are submitted on the EU Funding and Tenders Portal. Please make sure to give us access to your proposal, this way we can check over the admin forms and approve the proposal internally via KRISTAL.

If you are a coordinator of an ERC or a consortium-based proposal, we can set up your proposal on the EU portal for you and help you manage the administrative process of your application.

For more information on how to submit a proposal on the EU portal, please consult our submitting a proposal page.

Financial considerations at proposal stage

Horizon Europe financial rules are different from many other funders. We recommend consulting our financial pre-award checklist document (link coming soon) to help prevent any unwanted financial issues when your grant becomes live!

We can advise on the eligibility of costs in the different schemes, but please contact your Faculty Research and Innovation Office to help you put your budget on KRISTAL.

Ethics and data protection considerations

All EU proposal submissions are subject to ethical review by the Commission. You need to also consider whether your research requires ethical clearance from the University.

In addition, you need to consider data protection and GDPR as part of your application.

Data management

You will need to think about how you will collect, manage and share the data generated by your project. You will have to devise a Data Management Plan (DMP) as a formal Deliverable by Month 6 with data being “as open as possible, as closed as necessary.” Support for DMPs is available from the Data Management Team.

Gender Equality Plan

From 2022 onwards, public bodies, research organisations or higher education institutions established in Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) in place by the time of the grant signature. For more information about how the University of Leeds meets the GEP requirements, please consult our Gender Equality Plan dedicated page.